Veronica and Sven’s Baby Diary

Hi everyone! I’m so sorry it’s taken me forever to write another post. It’s not that I’ve forgotten about it; more that I just have been run off my feet for ages. I’ve been working after hours a lot (after the kids go to bed until around midnight most nights) as I had a major deadline at work on the 1st August (culmination of 4 years of work). Any free time I’ve had has been spent either sleeping or doing chores. That said, I’m very proud of the choices I made. I didn’t give up any time with the children in order to do the extra hours I required (although poor Sven missed out a bit). I don’t think I could have done it if I’d had to.

The family are all doing really well. Sven has been keeping himself busy popping out for photo trips to strange places. I’m still not sure I understand the fascination with drains and dams but at least it keeps him happy. I’ve also been keeping myself entertained with my tap dancing classes. I am even going to do my EXAMS!!! Hahahaha :) I think it’s so funny that I’ll probably be being compared with ten-year-olds. I also recently had a dance concert where I got to be a pirate! Here I am below on stage (in the only photo I can find) on the far-right in the stripey top.

Holly is doing so well. She’s just FULL of questions. She never, ever stops talking and has even been known to talk in her sleep. She’s extremely articulate and loves reading books and understanding about new things. She’s just phenomenonally intelligent. I don’t even want to quantify that by saying that she’s intelligent for a three-year-old because she is constantly amazing us with what she can learn and how quickly she picks things up. She can even spell her name, including “Abrahamsson”, and we didn’t even intentionally teach her - she just kept reading it off her drink bottle then eventually worked it out and started spelling it without prompting. She’s becoming much more social these days too and loves talking to other people in shopping centres and playgrounds. She’s also very caring and will often make sure Simon is getting looked after too, ensuring other children offer him a turn when they’re playing together. It makes you’re heart all warm and gooey watching that sort of thing

Holly has also gotten quite independant recently. She will go to the fridge and get her own drink out, she can put herself to bed and has FINALLY stopped sucking her thumb. Oh! That’s a funny story itself - we went to the dentist who took one look at Holly and asked us if she was a thumb-sucker. Apparently it was starting to change the shape of her face! So, at the dentists recommendation we bought some Stop ‘N Grow. I tried it out on my own thumb first and confirmed that it was truly horrible stuff that made me twitch and pull funny faces from the exact moment my thumb hit my mouth and for at least five minutes afterwards. Anyway, at bedtime we painted Holly’s thumb with it and reminded her not to put it in her mouth and she immediately said “okay” then put her thumb in her mouth. The expression was simply priceless! The funniest part was, after reminding her about it and with her still pulling faces after the last time she promptly did it again! Hahahahaha! I almost wet myself laughing. There were a few random “Bleaaaugh!” sounds every so often for the rest of the sleep which made us crack up but since then it appears as though she’s finally stopped sucking her thumb! Hooray!

Simon is getting soooooo big. At daycare today the girls were saying that he’s the second-biggest in his whole class and he’s only just moved up. He has the same shoe size as Holly already and is just to physical all the time. He never stops! He’s also quite fearless and will happily jump off couches, dive into ball pits, and climb everything. He’s also great with his food and will eat just about everything (except lettuce). He’s talking more and will get his point across, but isn’t overly conversational. He’s actually a surprisingly quiet little boy (I don’t know whether that’s because he has to compete with Holly) and hardly ever cries. He even has six teeth at various stages of coming through at the moment and his temperment hasn’t even changed (that will make fourteen teeth all up). He just loves to get out and about and wants to get into everything. We’re working on getting him to stay close to us though because he’s so fast that once he’s gone he’s almost uncatchable and, if he does get out of sight, he doesn’t come back when you call. I think his favourite things are torches, reading books, and watching Sesame Street’s “Mahna mana” on YouTube

We’ve been going out a lot lately over weekends. Recently we went to Currumbin Sanctuary for the day and saw (and touched) lots of animals. Sven and Guy even had a go on an adventure climbing thingy while we were there where they were climbing through the trees on a few ropes. And last weekend we went camping to Mt Mee again. I still marvel at how Sven managed to convince me to go camping in winter. The biggest miracle was that we managed to fit everything into the car that we needed - the back of an Astra filled with a 12-man tent, portacot, blankets, pillows, camping equipment and food, plus two car seats with kids is quite a sight. Luckily we survived thanks to a last-minute purchase of snow jackets for all and the blessing of good weather.

Oh, and just some quick notes to go with the pics - Simon got his first blood nose when he fell face-first inside the tent. Sven stopped me from cleaning him up so that he could get a pic. And Sven was mad enough to jump into the water which, another camper commented, was so cold he thought he’d lost his foot when he put his toe in. Sven commented it was physically painful in the water at one point when he had to get out of his boat to empty out water.

Well, that’s surely enough blabbering so here are a whole bunch of pics from our recent trips. Enjoy!